Switching
by Raberba girl
Summary: Richard Grayson wakes up alongside a strangely familiar gorgeous woman, a badly scarred bird boy, and a thirteen-year-old who's freaked out by all the strangers in his bedroom.


Batfam Bingo 2019

Square: Switching

A Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Chapter 1 (rough draft)

Summary: Richard Grayson wakes up alongside a strangely familiar gorgeous woman, a badly scarred bird boy, and a thirteen-year-old who's freaked out by all the strangers in his bedroom. Four-way crossover between canon and three of my Batfam AUs.

o.o.o

Dick Grayson woke up on the floor of an unfamiliar bedroom to find himself being stared at by the absolute bombshell kneeling over him. "Wow," he remarked faintly. Everything from her gorgeous face to the breasts softly swelling her glittery tank top to her lithe, athletic figure to what he could see of her butt from this angle was basically perfect. He suddenly, _finally_ understood all the complaints he'd heard over the years about how unfair it was.

"You're super-hot," the bombshell told him, sounding almost bewildered about it. "Also, there are two more of us, both babies, and I'm kind of worried about the one who looks like someone put him through a Joker shredder."

Alarmed, Dick sat up. He was right next to a twin-sized bunk bed, the lower half of which was empty. The bombshell extended a hand to help him up and he hopped to his feet.

The top bunk contained two snuggling, fast-asleep boys. The bigger one was the 'little spoon' and looked exactly like a thirteen-year-old Dick Grayson. The one who'd wrapped himself around thirteen-year-old Dick like a sleepy commuter guarding a backpack on public transportation looked about ten. He also had somewhat pointed ears, paler skin than any Dick should have, long black hair with an inch or two of green tips, and a horrific collection of scars.

Both boys were sleeping peacefully, though, so Dick turned back to the female version of himself. "Any idea how we got here?"

"None whatsoever. How much do you know about alternate universes?"

"I'm Nightwing. You have a Batman?"

"Is she an actual man in your world?" fem-Dick asked, lighting up with interest.

"Bruce, I'm Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian, and now Duke," Nightwing rattled off.

"I don't know Duke and I guess you don't have a Cass, but-"

"Cass Cain? Hah! Your Bruce adopted her?"

"Yup. In any case, it sounds a lot like a genderswap," she said, and then they exclaimed together, "Awesome!"

They grinned at each other. "I'm Rickie," she said, sticking out her hand to shake. "Riccarda."

"Dick." He glanced at the children. "How do we distinguish?"

"Little cuties should have cute nicknames, so one of them should be Dickie," she said. "I can go by Ric if you'll be Richard."

"That's fine. And maybe Johnny for the other one." He affectionately stroked the scarred boy's hair. It was kind of amazing how it felt more like sharing brains than having a conversation.

The scarred version of Dick must have been a light sleeper, because at the feel of fingers in his hair, he popped upright, instantly awake. His eyes flickered around the room in alarm.

"It's all right, Dickie," Richard soothed, and his female counterpart added, "Sorry for waking you, sweetheart."

_"Good morning?"_ the boy signed warily.

Richard and Ric glanced at each other, then signed back, _"Good morning!"_

The boy looked around again and then climbed down from the bed, making cawing and warbling noises exactly like a bird. The thirteen-year-old stirred. "Oh, wait-" Ric started to say as the youngest child left the room, but he didn't pause or acknowledge her, and she scrambled to follow him.

Richard turned back to find the other boy now sitting up in bed, staring at him with wide eyes. Richard tried a smile. "Hi! Sorry to barge in on you like this, seems like-"

"BRUUUCE!" the boy yelled, and hastily hopped down from the bed and out of the room.

"Aw, crap..."

They all sort of met up in the kitchen, where a very bewildered-looking Alfred was being insistently twittered at by the bird boy as Ric sneaked a couple of pieces of bacon.

"Uncle Alfred!" the thirteen-year-old cried, "these weirdos broke into my room and kidnapped Timmy!"

"We didn't kidnap Tim!" Richard yelped. "We are universally displaced."

"[_CAW_] [_WARBLE_]" the bird boy stormed, and wheeled around to march out of the room again as if on a mission.

"Good heavens," Alfred murmured, peering at the adults closely. Both of them smiled sheepishly and waved. "What on earth is going on?"

"Are you all civilians here?" Richard asked.

"I should hope so," Alfred said warily.

"No Batman?" Ric spoke up.

"That's Bruce's plushie," the boy said, staring at her as if she was crazy.

"Civilians," Richard and Ric said together, then he hurried back out of the kitchen to see where the bird boy had got to.

Ransacking the bedrooms, apparently. "Whoa, kiddo, stop, this isn't our house," Richard said in alarm, trying to stop him. The boy shook him off and slammed the closet door shut, then marched to the next room. "Who are you looking for? Hey, baby Dick, who are you looking fo-?"

"[_CAW_]. [_WARBLE_]."

"...I feel like I should know what you're talking about, but I really don't."

The boy impatiently pushed him away and continued his search in the next room. This one had a lot of photographs, and he suddenly stopped dead when one of them caught his eye. He picked up the frame in slightly clumsy hands and stared. "...[_warble_]? [_caw_]?" he finally vocalized, sounding uncertain.

"That's Tim and Jason," Richard said, pointing. "Looks like they're eating ice cream together."

"[_caw_], [_warble_]," the boy said wistfully.

"Wait- Wait a minute, are those _names_?!"

The boy put down the photo and signed, _"I want my brothers!"_

"Hey... Hey, kiddo, so, the thing is, you're in a different world right now. Your brothers are safe at home, okay? But you got kind of stranded here, and we need to figure out how to send you back home, okay, Dickie?"

"Jjohnny."

"What?"

"You bbi'ckg Ddick, I Jjohnny."

Dick blinked, surprised at how casually the boy recognized and accepted him as an older version of himself. "Uh, okay. I guess you'll be Johnny, then, and the other one downstairs will be Dickie. Let's go get something to eat, okay?" He was relieved when Johnny sighed and put a hand into his, and they went back down to the kitchen together.

Ric, now sitting at the table with a full plate, looked up when they came in. "So, their Bruce, Jay, and Tim are gone," she reported, "which I assume means they're off in my world or your world or Dickie's world."

"This one says he's Johnny, so that one'll be Dickie," Richard explained, gesturing.

"Ric says you guys are from the _circus_," Dickie piped up, working on a breakfast plate of his own. "Can you do a trick?"

"Not in the kitchen," Alfred said at once, sitting down with his own plate (which was a little spooky in and of itself).

"Later," Richard promised.

"_I_ can do tricks," Dickie went on. "I can do a handstand and a cartwheel and make pennies show up in Tim's ear, and some card tricks, too. I'll show you after breakfast!"

Alfred asked the adults, "How certain are you that Bruce and the boys ended up somewhere safe?"

"It's a pretty good guess," Ric said, "though of course, there's no way to know for sure without a specialist."

"Do you have a Justice League?" Richard asked.

Dickie's "What's that?" was answer enough.

"No Batcave, no Justice League, no Bryce," Ric muttered. "I think we might be a little bit screwed."

o.o.o

Bruce Wayne was _so_ confused (and kind of overwhelmed). All the other versions of him seemed so _competent_ and single-minded. He'd followed them around, marveling at the opulence of their house and the delightful insanity of their Batcave. But they were constantly talking about things that went completely over his head, he was feeling useless and left out and really missing his children, so he wandered back out of the cave and went to find something less lonely to occupy his time with.

A boy, about thirteen or so, was going through an intense workout in the gym, listening to Iranian rock music. Wayne quietly stepped up to a machine nearby. They spent about twenty minutes ignoring each other, and then the boy sighed, went through a cooldown, drank some water, shut off the music, then wiped his face with a towel and sat back in a chair with his eyes closed.

Wayne watched him for a while, surprised to pick out familiar facial features. He started to suspect that this boy might be the biological son of whichever Bruce Wayne lived here.

The boy finally opened his eyes and glared. "What?"

Wayne shrugged. "Nothing. Just bored and lonely and figured I'd hang out with you."

The boy's eyes widened, then his face smoothed out into a bland expression and his hand slipped into his pocket.

"So," Wayne asked, "what's your name?"

The boy's expression twisted. "You know perfectly well who I am, Father."

So he _was_ the son of one of the Bruces. "I don't, actually. I have three children - Dick, Jason, and Tim - but it looks like I might still be missing one."

Two of the other Bruces burst into the room, looking around wildly. Then the male one demanded, "What happened, Damian?"

"Who's SHE?!" the boy screeched.

"This is- oh, good Lord, no one told you."

"The three of us are universally displaced," Bryce explained impatiently. "Your father is still down in the cave, working on how to get us home."

A voice spoke up from the inner entryway, "Soooo, I don't need this after all...?"

They all turned to find a teenager peering into the gym, a baseball bat grasped in his hand.

"False alarm, Thomas," the younger boy snapped.

"I got to be Bruce, this is Bryce," one of the men explained. "We're calling this one Wayne - he's a civilian - and your Bruce is going by Batman. Everything's fine for now, Duke."

"...Yeah, I'm gonna go get breakfast," Duke said, hefting the bat casually over one shoulder and retreating.

"How many kids do you guys _have_?" Wayne asked, wondering if he was going to have his own versions of Damian and Duke someday.

"Five," Bryce said. "I don't have a Duke, but I have a son named Cass, in addition to Damian and the girls."

Bruce hesitated before admitting, "Nine."

"NINE?!" Wayne and Damian shrieked in unison, and Bryce frowned.

"Well, six to nine, depending on your definition."

"Who are they?" Bryce demanded.

"Same as yours. The youngest ones are permanently displaced alternates of Dick, Jason, and Tim." Bruce took out his phone and started pulling up photographs. The others crowded around to see, Damian imperiously pulling his hands down to get a better look at the screen. "What's wrong with them?" he demanded.

"Damian," Wayne admonished, already feeling parental even though he'd barely met this kid. "There's nothing inherently wrong with people just because they don't meet standards of normalcy." Damian scowled.

"As to their appearance," Bruce said, "they were tortured by...a version of the Joker."

Bryce hissed under her breath. Wayne asked cautiously, "Do I want to know who the Joker is?"

"No," the others all said in unison.

The...Bat people (and _wow_ was that weird that they went under the same pseudonym as his favorite childhood toy) soon returned to the cave, and Wayne followed Damian to the kitchen, where Duke was eating breakfast and Alfred was cooking.

"Ah, Uncle Alfred!" Wayne exclaimed, glad to see a familiar face. "...What are you wearing?"

The man raised an eyebrow. "I take it the Alfred Pennyworth in your universe is your biological uncle?"

"Are you...not family here?"

"Alfie's family," Duke spoke up. "But, like, with a salary; it's weird."

"Pennyworth is Father's trusted servant, but is to be respected as a grandfather," Damian announced. "If you harm him, you will taste steel."

"...Right, well, those sausages look good, I think I'll have some of those," Wayne said, giving up trying to pick apart the complicated dynamics of this world.

o.o.o

The good part was that they'd woken up in Red Robin's personal headquarters, so they had everything they needed to start working right away.

The bad part was that neither of them knew what to do with small children.

"What are you doing, Wed?" the more obnoxious one asked, climbing right into Red's lap. The child had difficulty pronouncing the letter R.

"I'm working, Jackie, I told you. Go play with Timmy."

"But Timmy is scared and boring!"

"Just what my self-esteem needed," Kim said dryly, "my own self thinking I'm boring."

Red sighed and stood up, taking the little boy by the hand. "Come on, Jackie, we'll find something for you to play that's not boring."

"I'm hungry!"

Oh yeah. Kids needed to be fed and watered on a regular basis. "Uhhhh..." He went to peer into the refrigerator, but, just as he'd expected, there was nothing in there except for a rack of protein shakes. "I'll order a pizza."

"Yaaayy! Timmy, we eat pizza!"

Timmy, the only ordinary one of the bunch, looked scared and forlorn as he half hid behind the kitchen entryway.

"Tim, I'm not gonna bite you. Come here and pick out which pizza you want," Red called.

Three of them had the same tastes, but Jackie turned out to be a vegetarian (which...wow. Okay). Red ordered several different kinds of pizza and Kim went out to pick them up, since she didn't want to risk either the location of her headquarters or the safety of a deliveryperson by making them come to Crime Alley.

In the meantime, Red set his hands on his hips and stared down at the kids. "Are you mad at us?" Timmy asked anxiously.

"No, I'm not," Red said, trying to keep his tone light and pleasant. "I just want to get us all home, okay?"

"Can I help?"

"No." Timmy bit his lip in distress, so Red added, "But thanks for offering."

"Wed, watch!" Jackie did a very clumsy sort of tumble thing. "Ta daaaa!" he announced at the end, posing like a gymnast and looking very proud of himself.

"Did Dick teach you that?" Red remarked, marveling at the kid's attitude. It was like he'd gotten all four shares of self-confidence for himself, not leaving much left over for the other three.

"Yes! But I do it wrong, so I practice!"

"Okay. Why don't you keep practicing, then, okay?"

"Okay!"

"And Timmy, let's see if we can find you a video game or something..."

o.o.o

"This house is STUPID!" J.J. yelled halfway through their exploration. "It's a WASTE! Do you know _how many_ families could fit in just this ONE HOUSE?!"

Peter took something out of his pocket and waved it at him. "Ccookie."

J.J. blinked at the cookie, then took it and started munching.

"This house _is_ stupid," Hood remarked. "The Batcave, I get; but the mansion? There're whole _wings_ no one's bothered to set foot in for years."

"No," his female counterpart spoke up, "I think this one's smaller than ours. Than mine, anyway."

Some more wandering proved her right. It was built more like a modern mansion than a historical one, and when they eventually came across Alfred again, he explained that after the earthquake, the manor had been rebuilt to be more functional in the present day rather than an exact replica of its former design.

"Didn't know Bruce had it in him," Hood remarked.

Jayden sighed. "Well, this has been just _so_ fun, but I'm gonna head down and see if Drake's made any progress on figuring out how to get us out of here."

However, she'd only crossed half the foyer when there was a mild commotion at the end of the house, suggesting that someone had arrived. Peter ran eagerly to see who it was, and J.J., who had nothing better to do, trotted after him.

"JJAAAAAYYY!" Peter yelled in delight, launching himself at the first newcomer.

"Hey, Pete," Jason laughed, catching him. "Doin' okay without Chirp and Warble?"

"Dey ggone! _Dem_ hhere!" Peter said indignantly, pointing back at the gaggle of his alternate selves.

Jason gave a brief nod. " 'Sup."

" 'Sup," J.J. returned loftily. Jayden rolled her eyes and Hood shook his head with a slight chuckle.

Selina stepped in from the garage. "Hey there, kitten."

"Sseena!" Peter hugged her, too.

After a brief who's-getting-called-what exchange, they all started heading down to the cave. Jason noticed J.J. staring at him and smiled. "Something on your mind?"

"No," the boy said quickly. "Just..." He fidgeted for a moment. "You look happy. Kinda."

"Happier than them?" Jason said, nodding at the older Jasons ahead of them.

"Yeah... I dunno." J.J. shrugged.

"Well, things have been going pretty well since the Batpocalypse. I think these little chickadees have been good for Bruce," Jason said, ruffling Peter's hair.

"There's nothing wrong with Bruce," J.J. said hotly.

"They said _your_ Bruce is a civilian, so, yeah, I imagine he's in a better place, mentally, than the vigilante versions of him are. You have to be kinda messed up in the head to be in our line of work."

J.J.'s eyes widened when they emerged into the open cave. "Is that a- a _dinosaur_?!"

Jason grinned. "Wanna get a closer look?"

"Yeah!"

TBC

I've had this in the works for _ages_, but didn't start working on it in earnest until I finished the TBWS "Never Adopted" route. I do have the next chapter of _Gifts From the Sea_ drafted, but it's trickier than usual because it's a sort of montage that takes place over several years, so I need to work on it some more before it's ready to post. Hopefully tomorrow.


End file.
